When I tell people that I my master’s degree will be in science writing, many ask what I will do with such an education. I often have difficulty answering, because, ironically, I have trouble articulating exactly what this degree means for me. Science is a passion for me; I left a successful career to earn a degree in zoology. However, it doesn’t interest other people as much, often because they don’t understand it or think they won’t (in that sense it’s like me with calculus). So, if I had to pinpoint what exactly it is I want this master’s education for it would be to learn how to write about science for non-scientists—for those people who think they will never understand it so they don’t try. This is a difficult endeavor, as not only do you have to know the science, but you have to walk the fine line between laying out basic facts in an interesting manner and “luring readers to raise their games” (Quammen 2004.).
I believe that one of the major problems with this task is the fact that many scientists, just like a majority of the general public, don’t know the history of the field. They also don’t understand the overlap not just between the sciences, but also between science and the humanities (which E.O. Wilson deftly tackles in Consilience, his thin volume on the continuum between arts, humanities and natural science). I’m learning that I too succumb to this ignorance. Fortunately, my graduate program requires me to design my own curriculum, and I chose this course in the history of science and scientific thinking to begin my credits. We do students—all students, not just undergraduate science majors—a disservice by not offering such a course.
With recent statistics such as nearly half of Americans not understanding, or wanting to learn about, evolution, Robin Dunbar is correct when he titled his book The Trouble with Science. He was also on target when, in the introduction, he said: “it seem to me that all these different phenomena share a common element: an information gap of disastrous proportions. Neither the proverbial man-in-the-street nor…views in the humanities have any real understanding of what scientists do or how science works” (Dunbar 7).
Dunbar spends his 189 pages outlining what he believes are the problems with science, but I think he has left out crucial parts of the equation. He rehashes old arguments that science is “spiritually corrosive” and that it “cannot really co-exist with anything” (9). He briefly discusses a history of the field, but in discussing how to define science, he loses me when he says that Newton didn’t do science when he developed the law of gravity. His reason? Because according to what we know now, Newton’s theories don’t tell us anything. To me, this is taking it out of context, because we have the ability to learn so much more today, with the help of supercomputers and electron microscopes and a myriad of other technologies that weren’t around when Newton was developing his theory, simply trying to explain the natural world. I have been trying to pinpoint just why Dunbar’s argument here is fallacious, but I am falling short, perhaps because it is just not a good argument.
Dunbar goes on to discuss the roots of science, or rather, if other species do “cookbook science.” Indeed, he is correct when he says that “being able to predict what is going to happen in order to be able to act in an appropriate way at the right moment is fundamental to survival” (58). However, I’m not convinced by his obtuse examples that what he describes isn’t just based in genetics, or that the behaviors don’t stem from adaptations in order to deal with the environment and simply survive. Certainly all animals make connections and learn these connections, which would behoove the animal if s/he wants to get her/his genes into the next generation—that’s survival. Science is a way of thinking, and I am not saying we are the only species to think this way, but it’s anthropomorphic to compare a way of thinking to the formal practice of science in which we engage. I do agree, “children behave as natural scientists,” though, especially because of the implications that has for education (particularly science education, which in our country is under duress at the moment) (114).
Dunbar also makes me long for the days when, like when Darwin was published, the “public at large” read his work, as well academics in non-science disciplines (135). It seems today, from the standpoint of science writers at least, that the public is only interested in specific stories: anecdotes about humans and animals interacting, medical mysteries, controversies and their backlashes, or science that only has personal relevance. How many people actually know the causes and rates of global warming? How many know how stem cells are really made, and how such research is conducted? My guess is not many, and in today’s world it is more important than ever to understand science and technology; nearly every aspect of our lives is affected.
I bring up the critiques of Dunbar’s book not because I think I can do better, but because if he lost me, someone who wants to read about the history of science and the intricacies of the discipline, he would lose other readers, and all of the points he made successfully will be wasted. Part of learning to be a good writer is honing the art of reading. I’m learning what to do in order to perfect my writing (insofar as one can perfect anything) while I am learning equally invaluable, possibly more valuable, lessons from the books that didn’t speak to me. Joan Didion has been quoted as saying she writes for the “woman on the bus.” It is she, as well as the “proverbial man-in-the-street” that science writers need to reach in order to educate the public at large, not just the people who already know how it works (7). As E.O. Wilson said, “science should be poetry, poetry science” (in Consilience).
Dunbar, Robin. 1995. The Trouble with Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 213 pages.
Quammen, David. 2004. “Was Darwin Wrong?” National Geographic, November 2004.
Wilson, E.O. 1998. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York, N.Y.: Vintage Books. 355 pages.
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